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On the Forbidden Subject of Culture

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<p>April 19, 2007

<em>UPDATE:

Thanks for the various thoughtful comments, thoughtful commenters - I&#39;m sure you know who you are.

First off, I do acknowledge that I was a little snarky and "aha!" in the initial reaction to things, and I agree that it just puts people in a bad mood. But, I could have easily erased what I said, and not because I think it was wrong to have the thought, but because it distracted so much from the majority of the stuff I was really trying to say. Yet, I would somehow feel it dishonest to do so, and the reason I write is to organize my thoughts and logic for people to see; I just wish people in general, and not just over the past few days, could read this blog as one man&#39;s thoughts in motion, as opposed my final thoughts on matters. I have strong opinions, but those thoughts wend and weave according to other good opinions.

That said, I also know I write a lot. Loooong posts. Opinionated posts. Wordy posts. And that&#39;s off-putting as well. I know that, but it would take me forever to get this stuff out if I had to condense it down, distill it, make it simpler. And since the vast majority of blogs out there write in short form, I don&#39;t feel like I&#39;m adding to a trend in need of reversal - on the contrary, I wish there were more thoughtful people who tried to think carefully, put in the time to express their opinions fully, and really engage with difficult subjects. So I think that perhaps the blogosphere is better off with a few wordy fools who try to think aloud and in the sense of intellectual full-contact sports.

As for race, I think the media is talking about it pretty minimally, as I assumed they would. And looking at this from primarily an American perspective. I&#39;m inevitably looking at this from a Korean perspective, because it is here in Korea that I sit, live, and work. It&#39;s here that I have worked with a lot of kids who look just like Cho in background, culture, and personality. I thought that I&#39;d be one of the few people talking not about there necessarily having to be some "cultural angle" on this, but that there should be room and though given to the possibility.

If anything, the problem isn&#39;t that the American media is focusing on his race, because it really isn&#39;t, and even if it did, I don&#39;t think it&#39;s bad to talk about possible cultural specifics, if done appropriately. However, the real problem is that the American media should have been talking about:
- why is it that only males are serial killers and mass murderers?
- why are they mostly white?
- when they aren&#39;t, what&#39;s the reason?

Instead of shutting down a conversation about the profiles of these kind of people, we should be opening it up. Were there some factors about extreme Christianity that led to this? Does this have nothing to do with the fact that some of the most outspoken and extreme Christian groups among American youth are of Korean descent? Is this question "wrong?"

I don&#39;t think so, if we are also asking, "Why are serial killers almost exclusively white?" There is a serious racial undertone to ALL such murders, in that the perpetrators are almost always white, as well as the overwhelming presence of gender, in that they are always male?

This is as obvious as the hand in front of my face, yet when I was asking these same questions in Columbine, no one wanted to go there. And nobody did. Instead, we look at Marilyn Manson, video games, and other things that were obviously not determining factors, since I&#39;d engaged in all above activities, but don&#39;t go around killing people. I loved me some NWA, and they were actually TALKING ABOUT going and killing white people. Yet, I didn&#39;t "go get my AK." I guess it WAS a good day.

I&#39;m saying that this whole brouhaha stems from the fact that Americans still have amazing difficulty talking about culture and race, in what is supposed to be the most diverse and multicultural society in the world, where anyone can be a citizen. We&#39;re getting better at it, but we&#39;re still not good at it.

So now, we&#39;re told to believe, before anyone even knows anything, that Cho&#39;s particular pathology could have had nothing to do with any cultural malaise, or that some of the roots of his alienation may not have had to do with being Asian. I&#39;m not saying there necessarily are, but to meet such a question with "this question is irrelevant. culture has nothing to do with this. conversation over" is equally un-productive.

And as for people saying that my ideas can be "co-opted" for the "other side," I just say that this is thinly-vieled intellectual cowardice talking, because I&#39;m not a hillbilly in a pickup truck talking about shooting the next Asian I see because he took daddy&#39;s factory job away. If you think that&#39;s what I&#39;m saying, or you confuse what I&#39;m saying with that, you&#39;re more paranoid than you think you are.

People should be talking more about aspects of masculinity here, because all these killers are MEN. What&#39;s up with that? People should be talking more about whiteness because the vast majority of these people are WHITE. And when they so shockingly and brutally aren&#39;t, we might ask the question "what traits did he share with the Columbine boys?" (which the media is already asking), but we also might look at "what traits might have been different that also got him to the same place of being able to commit mass murder like this?"

And if we&#39;re going to be comparing to Columbine, while never even really having an intelligent about the fact that the politics of whiteness as an identity, masculinity, and feeling of extreme alienation seem to lead to something, if we can agree to talk about all these things with the Columbine boys - IF - then in Cho&#39;s case, we&#39;d have to also talk about the one thing he did NOT share with them and the MAJORITY of the rank of the killers he has so infamously joined, that being his Asianness, Koreanness, or whatever - in any case, his non-whiteness.

That makes the case of the DC snipers ALL the more interesting, all the MORE remarkable. If you were a criminal profiler for the FBI, or a clinial psychologist, or an administrator in charge of schools, I hope these people would find such questions interesting. If someone held an academic conference about it, I&#39;d hope they&#39;d attend, rather than close one&#39;s ears and boycott it.

But that seems like what most people want to do. I don&#39;t fear some imagined backlash against Asian men; sure, there may be a few idiots out there who do something, but overall, it&#39;s probably for any particular Asian male right now to die in a car accident, or of lung cancer. So buckle up and stop smoking - I don&#39;t think anyone has to hide in their houses.

But the disappointing reaction is, "Stop talking about race! He was just some crazy fucker!"

No, he wasn&#39;t. No, all the killers weren&#39;t. There are clear patterns here. Start with the fact of maleness and extreme alienation, along with feelings of victimhood and desire for martyrdom. Then work your way down to identifying any overarching cultural patterns in white or Asian (Korean) socialization patterns, similarities in self-identification, all that stuff.

I&#39;m not a psychologist. But if I were, I&#39;d be licking my lips over this stuff. Has there been no one who&#39;s written a doctoral thesis about "The Role of White Identity, Disaffectation, and Constructions of Masculinity in Serial Murderers"? Maybe that&#39;s a wack topic, and it&#39;s not my field. But seriously - has no one done research on this? Come on? Is this really such a taboo topic, even to a research psychologist?

Anyway, mums the word. All the serial killers were just crazy fuckers. Let&#39;s just leave it at that and act all surprised AGAIN when this happens AGAIN, which it will.

And for all those imagined white guys who are cutting out eyeholes in sheets to go get that Asian male grad student who took that last fluffy donut from the tray in the cafeteria (those BASTARDS! they&#39;re really taking everything!), don&#39;t worry:

The next mass murderer, statistically and historically speaking, will probably be a white guy, anyway.

So what&#39;s everyone worried about? At least the imagined heat will be off Asians, right? Whew! </em>

-------------- ORIGINAL POST --------------

Over the last 24 hours, it&#39;s been suggested that even broaching the issue of possible cultural issues when looking at the case of Cho warrants being labeled "racist." <a href="http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/04/17/vtech_korea/index.html" target="_blank">Salon.com</a> has linked to a previous post from this site that relays the story that several university administrators in Korea with whom I spoke when Fulbright Korea hosted a tour here expressed concern about the fact that they saw a pattern of Korean students studying in the US having trouble adjusting, and that those students were almost exclusively male. This was several years ago.

Or read this:</p>
<blockquote><em>Although Asian Americans were at relatively lower risk of homicide in the 1970s and 1980s, they have experienced increasingly higher risk since the 1990s. From 1970 to 1993, the homicide rate for Asian Americans in California increased 170%.13 Asian immigrants are also at significantly higher risk of homicide than Asians that were born in the United States. The growing trend of homicide among Asian American communities coupled with the increase of Asian American youth violence thus poses an urgent issue of concern for Asian Americans.</em></blockquote>
<p>Whence these racist, cultural arguments? Another, from the same source:</p>
<blockquote><em>Despite the model minority myth that Asian Americans as a whole are economically and academically successful, delinquency among Asian American youth has actually been on the rise in recent years. In the past 20 years, the number of API youth involved in the juvenile justice system has increased dramatically, while national arrest trends for Black and White youth have decreased. Arrest rates for Southeast Asian youth (Vietnamese, Cambodia , Laotian), are the highest within the overall API population. Studies have shown that peer delinquency is the strongest predictor of adolescent delinquency. Other suggested risk factors for adolescent delinquency among Asian Americans include personal experiences of victimization, acculturative conflict, family conflict, and individualist versus collectivist orientation.</em></blockquote>
<p>More racists? Or how about a report on <a href="http://www.sph.umich.edu/apihealth/community.htm" target="_blank">"Violence Affecting Asian-American and Pacific Islander Communities"</a>, compiled by Masters candidates at the Michigan School of Public Health?

But wait? For me to pose questions that perhaps young Cho Seung-hui could have had "personal experiences of victimization, acculturative conflict, family conflict, and individualist versus collectivist orientation" that maybe, maybe could have played a role in his pathology...

How did I become "racist? for asking the same questions? Here&#39;s what I wrote in <a href="http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/2007/04/shooter_is_sout.html" target="_blank">the original post</a>, which was fired off in the heat of the moment, upon the initial revelation that the shooter was of Korean descent:</p>
<blockquote><em>A group of American university administrators whom Fulbright hosted nearly 10 years ago, when being a tour of Korean universities, asked the staff, "Why is it that out of all our international students, Korean males have so much trouble?"

To my surprise, all of the university officials cited incident after incident of Korean male graduate students who seemed to have trouble adjusting, often got into fights with other students in the living spaces, and were often the source of trouble in dealing with romantic relationships gone bad or women in general, especially when they involved Korean females dating non-Koreans.</em></blockquote>
<p>In <a href="http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/2007/04/the_politics_of.html" target="_blank">the longer post</a>, I continued asking questions that were pretty basic and acceptable before two days ago, pointing out that many Asian and Asian American males often face cultural pressures particular to the Asian cultures that they come from, as well as socialization as an Asian male in the greater American context as well.

How dare I say such a thing? Funny how the raison d&#39;être for community organizations such as the <a href="http://www.kyccla.org/about/index.htm" target="_blank">Koreatown Youth & Community Center (KYCC)</a> can talk about:</p>
<blockquote><em>...programs and services...specifically directed towards recently-immigrated, economically-disadvantaged youth and their families who experience coping and adjustment difficulties due to language and cultural barriers.</em></blockquote>
<p>Yet when someone points out that perhaps some of Cho&#39;s pathology had to do with being an Asian male, subject to possible culturally-determined pressures as well as that of being subject to socialization/discrimination <em>as an Asian male</em> - all of which where conversations going on within the Asian American community until just two days ago - this is now out of bounds?

So asking the question <em>before</em> this incident was OK. Asking it after Cho&#39;s bloody rampage is now grounds for arguing that one supports an ideology of racial superiority. That&#39;s especially funny since my mother is Korean and I have younger Korean cousins in college now who&#39;ve been through the educational meat grinder here, and I have been involved in just such community organizations as the ones mentioned above when I lived in the Bay Area.

And the other sad thing about the sudden "off-limits" status of this issue is the disappointing fact that Americans of all "colors" still have such difficulty talking about the overlapping boundaries of race, nation, and culture. Pointing out before this incident that Asian/Asian American males had specific identificational and cultural concerns, especially when one is talking about 1.5 generation Korean Americans (which is how Cho is generally being referred to now) was OK and actively encouraged in multicultural settings, especially since this was expected of anyone who wanted to convey one&#39;s real cultural sensitivity as an professor, teacher, counselor, social worker, or psychologist working with a variety of people from diverse backgrounds.

I have worked with and am familiar with a few community-based organizations when I was back in Oakland, and had many Korean American friends who work in orgs related to specifically "meeting the needs" of Asian American youth, dealing with the issue of domestic violence in the Korean American community, and was familiar with several other non-profit orgs that dealt specifically with problems of reducing participation in gang activity among Southeast Asian youth, issues specific to that community, organizations based in Chinatown, as well as other places around the East Bay.

I have friends who&#39;ve worked deeply within many organizations that held the assumption that "culture matters" and that Asian/Asian American youth had specific needs that should be recognized in the larger community. I know people who stayed up long nights applying for city, state, and federal grants to operate such projects, programs, and organizations that took the relevance of disaporic culture and its effect in Asian kids in the US as a central assumption of their reason to exist.

Now, after this incident, culture not only <em>doesn&#39;t matter</em>, even broaching the topic is grounds for being labeled a "racist," even when one is working well within a set of affective connections to a community for which such issues have been stated concerns <em>for years</em> - nay, decades - before Cho Seung-hui walked into a Virginia Tech classroom and started his rampage of death.

Yes, of course he was an individual, and he is fully responsible for his actions. But Korean culture now stops at the airport? Or with a green card? That&#39;s certainly news to me. I guess I didn&#39;t get the memo. And I guess I should also be expecting my KKK membership card in the mail any day now. Thanks, <a href="http://www.kyccla.org/about/index.htm" target="_blank">Salon</a>, for declaring such talk as mere "instant prejudice."

Funny thing is that I, as well as the university administrators mentioned in my initial reaction, Asian American community organizers, and a whole lot of other people were thinking in these terms for years before this. Now, <a href="http://www.aaja.org/news/aajanews/2007_04_16_01/" target="_blank">some</a> would have us go in the opposite direction:</p>
<blockquote><em>As coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting continues to unfold, AAJA urges all media to avoid using racial identifiers unless there is a compelling or germane reason. There is no evidence at this early point that the race or ethnicity of the suspected gunman has anything to do with the incident, and to include such mention serves only to unfairly portray an entire people.

The effect of mentioning race can be powerfully harmful. It can subject people to unfair treatment based simply on skin color and heritage.</em></blockquote>
<p>I feel that point of view, but much of the popular reaction has been to link mentioning culture or nationality with "racism" itself.

And the many Asian and Asian American commenters who&#39;ve written in, saying that my apparent status as "white" or a "neocon" or a "loser who can&#39;t get women at home" or far worse names.

Yep. There I am. That&#39;s why I live in Korea, why I learned Korean, why I write these incessantly long posts, and why I conduct my research. But when I pull out my Korean-mom-racial-membership card, does that mean I&#39;m a self-hating Korean American? Do I only hate half of myself? Or maybe my Korean "half" hates my black "half" and we are in eternal conflict. I think I have to go beat myself up now.

It&#39;s interesting that the mode of even calling me "racist" relies on racist slurs and categorical assumptions.

My point is that I shouldn&#39;t have to pull out the "my mom&#39;s Korean" as a magical shield in order to say what wasn&#39;t unreasonable to say until before this incident. I should have to <em>play identity politics</em> as a qualification to <em>talk about identity at all</em>. That&#39;s one of the thing that makes this whole thing get more and more ridiculous.

Does anyone forget that the film <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Luck_Tomorrow" target="_blank">Better Luck Tomorrow</a></em>, which touched on Asian American identity, socialization, alienation, violence, and other facets of Asian American culture - especially from the perspective of Asian American masculinity? So after the fictional violence witnessed in the narrative, we can talk about such issues - which is what I assumed the filmmakers wanted when it went mainstream and didn&#39;t merely screen in art house theaters? But after a real incident that could be seen to touch on similar issues, now that real people are dead and dying, broaching the subject gets you lumped in with the Klan.

I better remember to tell my mom that I hate Koreans now. That should be a fun conversation.

And just as I said, here are some of the conversations people are having now in Korea, from a look at the Korean press. From <em>The Korea Times </em>(which has masked its URL, so no link is possible:</p>
<blockquote><em>"I couldn&#39;t believe that someone like me was really involved in this brutal murder," a netizen (ID hahaha) said. Other people showed the same response as they said they have begun to feel more responsibility for the case when they found out that a Korean was involved.

Others said that the case looked similar to some cases happening in the Korean military where young soldiers try to desert from their barracks out of love or relationship issues.</em></blockquote>
<p>I&#39;m not saying that they&#39;re right or wrong. But these are questions people are asking. Are Koreans "racist" for asking these questions, which a lot of us are thinking about as well?</p>
<blockquote><em>There are also questions raised over studying abroad at a very young age _ quite the fashion in Korea at the moment. As domestic media in the U.S. referred to Cho as a "loner," people are now questioning whether sending their kids abroad for study would be good.

There were constant reports of children feeling lonely and causing problems with drinking, doing drugs or having sex problems, but the massacre has triggered the debate on whether such studying is really needed.

Cho flew to America when he was a little kid, and is said to have not made himself accustomed to the different culture. ``I think his being alone made him a loner, and made him do something horrible. And would you still say that won&#39;t happen to your child?&#39;&#39; a blogger grandchyren asked.</em></blockquote>
<p>From <em><a href="https://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2007/04/18/200704180092.asp" target="_blank">The Korea Herald</a></em>, as I grimly predicted, and as is all too often the case when extreme shame from one&#39;s relatives or persons within one&#39;s realm of concerns brings shame to your or your organization, both his parents attempted to take their own lives, the father apparently "successfully":</p>
<blockquote><em>Los Angeles-based Radio Korea reported Wednesday morning that Cho&#39;s parents attempted suicide, according to neighbors.

Cho&#39;s father reportedly slashed his wrist after having learned of his son&#39;s alleged killings at around 1 p.m. Tuesday, Seoul time.

Cho&#39;s mother attempted to commit suicide by taking toxic drug, Radio Korea said. She was quickly transported to a nearby hospital, but is listed in critical condition according to the report.</em></blockquote>
<p>No, culture isn&#39;t a factor at all here, and it should most certainly not be talked about, right? No one was surprised a couple years ago when a scandal ensued in a high school over a student who had been physically abused, which, upon reaching nationwide proportions, the principal took a leap off into the Han River. No one in Korea was really shocked by this, although the incident is unfortunate. I&#39;m not talking about ancient, fetishized elements of a Hollywood movie about samurai over a swelling soundtrack - I&#39;m talking about real people.

And I guess me having expressed the concern that his parents would immediately attempt suicide in a similar way was just me being "insensitive," rather than observing that such a thing is not only not unusual in a situation like this in a Korean context, it&#39;s not at all surprising, however unfortunate.

And in my head, when the leading cause of death for Korean teens and twenties in South Korea is suicide, most often caused by culturally specific forms of stress, isolation, and social factors that are not factors in different cultures, and I see a Korean kid - and again, I am of the old-school Asian American assumption that culture doesn&#39;t stop with a green card, but I guess I&#39;m old-fashioned and "racist" in the post-Cho Seung-hui era - who struck me as possibly influenced by similar concerns...why is it suddenly inappropriate to raise the notion of culture? Just because it makes us uncomfortable now that it&#39;s real, raw, and in the nation&#39;s face, as opposed to the more hidden back rooms of our ethnic communities?

This is not saying that there were no factors related to Cho being American. Surely, obviously, naturally - there were. He wasn&#39;t an exchange student who got off a place last September. He lived and socialized and breathed and experienced life in America. And yet, even without getting into the fact that Korean culture doesn&#39;t stop at the airport terminal when a kid is 8, and that he&#39;s generally considered by even Korean-Americans as a "1.5er," let&#39;s not forget that he was Asian American; in other words, he was not white, and most likely did not see himself (and I&#39;m going out on a limb here, as many of the people who adamantly insist that Cho was and could have been "American") as "just another kid."

A similar attitude of non-reality surrounds the fact that no one asks the question of what aspects, if any, of whiteness or white identity itself informs the fact that in most such incidents, the perpetrators are white, middle class males? A few people poked at the question after Columbine, but most people chose to toss that hot potato.

I&#39;m not saying <em>being white</em> cause you to <em>kill people</em>. I am saying that it should be OK for us to ask certain questions about what peculiar concerns there <em>just might be</em> in terms of socializing, identifying, and being labeled as "white" and male in American society, especially in the midst of America&#39;s "culture wars," major shifts in norms and role expectations with regard to not just race, but class, gender, sexual orientation, and perceived amounts of privilege?

These are some questions that people in Whiteness Studies ask, which is a new and necessary branch of inquiry partially related to Ethnic Studies. It recognizes that "people of color" do not just exist a blank backdrop of nothingness, but that "whites" are "raced" just as much as "Blacks" or "Asian Americans" or "Latinos" or any other recognized (and socially constructed) racial group in the United States. Yet still, some people think Whiteness Studies must necessarily be a group of people trying to assert "white rights" or be secret Klan members.

Yet, when a dated-but-smart film such as John Singleton&#39;s <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Learning" target="_blank">Higher Learning</a></em> deals with the journey of a white kid who feels alienated, ostracized, and actively victimized <em>as a white man</em>, who then goes to a high perch with a high-powered rifle to start a killing spree, it&#39;s lauded and applauded.

Until some white kid(s) actually commits such an act in question, at which point asking certain questions is out-of bounds again.

Generally, as a doctoral student and young scholar in Ethnic Studies, I&#39;ve noticed the tendency to confuse talking about race with being racist. This is frustrating to no end. And in the case of Cho, it really wasn&#39;t about race, but more about nationality and culture, and asking the question of the extent to which Cho&#39;s obvious inner pain and turmoil just may have been culturally specific and valenced.

But again, if the shooter had been an "Arab terrorist" I think the cultural argument would help us humanize him - who was he? How did he get caught up in this? What were some personal frustrations as a poor, Palestinian (for example) boy with few future prospects that might have made him an easy recruit?

Is this line of questioning "racist?"

Then I guess, so is it all, including the Harvard School of Public Health, where a conference <a href="http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/05.13/07-disparities.html" target="_blank">convened around a very similar issue</a> in 2004:</p>
<blockquote><em>Faculty, students, and fellows interested in disparities in health care due to ethnic and racial differences convened at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) Friday (May 7) for a symposium seeking to translate research into practice.

Topics discussed at the all-day event, the Second Annual Symposium on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities Research in the U.S., included Latino and Asian mental health, the increasing presence of minority researchers in the field, societal determinants of health, quality of care, and politics and policy as related to ethnic and racial health disparities.</em></blockquote>
<p>The "racism" continues:</p>
<blockquote><em>Among the wide variety of topics discussed was new research on the mental health status of Latinos and Asians in America. Margarita Alegria, director of the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research at the Cambridge Health Alliance and a visiting professor of psychiatry at Harvard, presented preliminary research from the National Latino and Asian American Study, begun in 2002.

The study, conducted in five languages, is a broad survey of Latinos and Asian Americans across the country and aims to fill in gaps in the information available on the mental health of those two ethnic groups.

The study so far shows that Puerto Ricans have a higher incidence of mental health disorders than other Latino groups, which also include Mexicans, Cubans, and a category for other Latinos. It also shows a strong trend of increasing mental health problems for Mexican-born immigrants the longer they are in the United States. To a lesser extent, other groups showed a similar correlation of increasing mental health problems with time in the United States, until they had lived 70 percent of their lives in the United States at which point the trend levels off.

For Asians, Vietnamese show a lower incidence of mental health disorders than other groups, which include Chinese, Filipinos, and other Asians. Alegria said researchers couldn&#39;t yet explain that low incidence of mental health problems for Vietnamese.

Alegria said the survey shows considerable regional variation, with mental health disorders increasing for individuals who live in parts of the country where their ethnic group is not concentrated. For example, she said, Mexicans, who are concentrated in the Southwest, had higher mental health problems when living in the Midwest. Cubans, who are concentrated in the South, had greater problems when living in the Northeast.

"Where you live really makes a big difference in your risk for psychological disorders," Alegria said.

One possible explanation for the higher rates of mental disorders among Puerto Ricans, Alegria said, is selective immigration. Alegria said more Puerto Ricans than other groups reported that they had immigrated because of health reasons. In addition, she said, there may be a demoralizing factor at work. Puerto Ricans, unlike members of the other ethnic subgroups, are U.S. citizens. They also report higher levels of English fluency. Alegria said Puerto Ricans may expect to be more socially mobile after arriving in the United States.

Alegria said the survey provides an important starting point for further research. Among important questions to be answered are the higher rates of disorders among Puerto Ricans, the lower rates among Vietnamese, the roots of geographic differences in different parts of the country, and </em><strong><em>the connection between length of time in the United States and rising incidence of mental health disorders.</strong></em></blockquote>
<p>There are a million questions I&#39;d ask the kid if me and Cho Seung-hui were sitting in a room and he had agreed to talk to me. The first one would have been "Are you feeling frustrated for any particular reason?" Another might be, "Are you feeling any academic pressures, any stress from you parents?" Who knows? These are perhaps overly direct and useless questions, since I&#39;m not a trained mental health care professional - but if I were, I sure would be attentive to issues of his cultural background, especially if my file on him indicated the possibility of that perhaps there might be more going on here than just your standard, John Doe pysch services referral.

It&#39;s a place to start. But he&#39;s dead, and that&#39;ll never happen. But to imply it&#39;s <em>racist</em> to ask these questions, to even think about the concerns of Korean American youth like Cho, who may well find themselves precariously placed along pressure points between family, friends, and school as defined in cultural, educational, linguistic, and pscyhological terms - this just boggles my mind now.

Posted by Michael Hurt on April 19, 2007

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Archived with permission of author.

Original Source: Scribblings of the Metropolitician
<a href="http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/2007/04/on_the_forbidde_1.html">http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/2007/04/on_the_forbidde_1.html</a></p>

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Michael Hurt

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2007-06-21

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Brent Jesiek

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In the Mind of a Murderer

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Justify it as you like, I cannot think of Cho Seung-Hui as anything other than a murderer. A lot has already been said about the subject, so apart from the links to his plays <a href="http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/04/17/cho-seung-huis-plays/">here[link]</a>, I won&#39;t be saying much.

The content of his plays being sophomoric aside (in all honesty my high school freshmen have written richer and deeper material than this), I don&#39;t think the content of his plays immediately says that he "fits the profile of a school shooter." As a previous entry said, there is no such thing as a profile; each situation is born of unique circumstances mingling with the unique turmoil in each unique individual. However, it <em>is</em> a definite warning sign of a person being disturbed, coupled with his general attitudes and way of pushing others away. Help was offered, but he refused it and did what he wanted to do anyway.

One can&#39;t help but feel powerless when confronted with a person like this. The other school shootings we had in the past were perpetrated by children who I think could have been talked to—just that insufficient attention was given to their behavior. However, this guy was already an adult—like many other instances of adults going on a rampage, they have already made up their minds and will no longer respond to reason. This is why it is imperative that schools should take events like this seriously. Sure, they are <em>aberrations</em>, but this implies that <em>somewhere, something went wrong.</em>

The most immediate problem seems to be security, of course. Students will not be able to bring firearms (or poison, as in the case of Gelyn Fabro) if the security weren&#39;t so lax. Guards search bags, yes, but do they know what they&#39;re searching for?

Of course, there&#39;s also the whole issue with of how the person is treated. The school can only do so much—personal and parental problems are already beyond the reach of guidance counselors—but still, the school can provide the student with an environment where he or she can express his or her frustrations in a harmless way. Cho&#39;s situation was different—this guy was already an adult, and that&#39;s why I believe that his problems were already beyond reasoning. He had to deal with them by himself, and he couldn&#39;t. He had to choose the worst possible option. But for high school students, I believe that something can be done. Of course, people are different. There are university students who might be receptive to counseling. Cho&#39;s case is indeed an aberration, but aberrations do not excuse the school from not taking any action. In his case, action was indeed taken. Schools just have to be sure that they&#39;ve done everything in such cases.

I&#39;ve always believed that elementary students need a teacher who they could see as a parent. In high school, they need a teacher who they could see as a friend or elder sibling. In college, a student needs a teacher who he or she could see as a mentor. Thankfully I&#39;ve had such teachers in all my years in the academe.

On a less serious note:
<a href="http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=231">Another Mario parody[link]</a>

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Confessions of a Would-Be School Shooter

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<p>By now the subject of Virginia Tech has been much publicized and probably hackneyed. We talk about lax gun control laws, wasted lives, disturbed young men and how we wish things like these would never happen again. In my <a href="http://aslancross.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/in-the-mind-of-a-murderer/">previous entry[link]</a>, I talked about how problematic Cho Seung-Hui is and the difficulty with which we tend to see the minds of these people. We always talk about things like these happening to someone else. However, as Bill Watterson once said in his great comic strip series Calvin & Hobbes, "We are all someone else to someone else." And so instead of talking about Cho from a distance and saying how crazy he was, I&#39;d like to talk about how I was probably just like him.

As I read through TIME&#39;s articles on the VTech massacre, I began reflecting on my own past and how disturbingly close I came to becoming a school shooter.

In real life, I&#39;m a very quiet person—meaning I don&#39;t speak much. If I have something to say and feel it&#39;s absolutely necessary, I have a very loud voice. Most of the time, though, I prefer to keep to myself and do not really talk. This habit caused one of my co-teachers to remark "You know, if one of us is going to become a psychopath, it would be Joey." Of course, I&#39;d just laugh and shrug off the remark. It was only today that I realized how close I was to this.

In one of my <a href="http://aslancross.wordpress.com/2007/04/08/resurrection-and-revival/">earlier posts</a> I talked about how I was so maligned by my classmates in grade school. I really hated them; there were times I&#39;d think about seeing their corpses hanging from a large weeping willow tree on campus. Seriously.

I think this started after my parents&#39; marriage was annulled, but I don&#39;t blame it entirely on them (and I presently harbor no bitterness toward them in this matter). There were a lot of events that led to certain, er, emotional imbalances I had in the past, I myself am not really sure how they add up to one another. Regardless, I was a young boy who was full of hate and I can very clearly remember that <i>at one point I really thought about shooting my classmates</i>. Dad had bought an air rifle at that time and I was beginning to learn how to use it, and I remember telling them to stop bugging me because I had a gun. Of course they mocked me even more, at which point I just kept quiet and seriously thought about blowing their brains out. How old was I then?

Ten.

The next year, I was beginning to move closer and closer toward rebellion, and my mind began to darken. I just have an eerie feeling that if the events of my life did not transpire as they have, I would have ended up walking onto campus with deadly weapons and making away with the lives of those who I saw as inferior, then myself. The difficulty in getting weapons aside, I certainly had the potential to be a school shooter.

I don&#39;t know how it happened, but God somehow dealt with the events of my life at that point and eventually brought me to Him. There were times I&#39;d still feel that I was alone against the world (I still sometimes do) but I cannot deny that it was something much more dangerous before. I wanted to lash out against a world I thought was inferior to me, a world that I felt worthy to judge, a world that oppressed me.

Later on in college, I met the very guy who I had really felt like killing several years before. We were both waiting for a cab outside the university, and since we were both going in the same direction we just decided to take the cab together. We talked a bit about how the other was doing in college, where we planned on going when we graduated, and so on. I really don&#39;t think this would have been possible had my Lord Jesus not wiped away the bitterness that so stained my soul at a young age.

When I was a child, I felt like killing children. Now that I have grown in the grace of the Lord, I feel it is my calling to help them truly live. And this would all not be possible without my God working in my life. In His death I died to myself, and in His resurrection I rose again to a new life. Thus I have come to appreciate even more what He has done for me.</p>
<blockquote>"And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." -Romans 12:2</blockquote>
<p>Teaching and not Shooting,

Your Black Lion

PS: I&#39;m going on a short hiatus starting Tuesday night until Saturday. I&#39;ll be going to Pagudpud with Martin, Arghs and Fil. Yes, I&#39;ll finally be going to the beach.

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It is human nature to try to figure out why bad things happen. Long ago, we blamed natural disasters on the capriciousness of the gods. The flood was caused by Poseidon&#39;s wrath, the storm by Thor&#39;s fury. Gifts were given to the gods, sacrifices of fruit, of animals, even of people, in order to placate them and turn their anger into love for their human charges. Today most of us (Pat Robertson excepted) reject the notion that bad things happen because of an angry and vengeful God. And yet, when tragedy strikes, we still seek to find the pattern underlying the madness, our ultimate failing that led to our punishment by...well, we&#39;re never quite sure, but we&#39;re sure we&#39;re being punished.

After Cho Seung-hui opened fire on his classmates in Blacksburg, Va., it was only natural for us to ask why. The primary answer — that he was a deeply troubled, possibly schizophrenic and certainly psychotic man who was operating outside the bounds of normal society — is unsatisfying and seems to beg more questions than it answers. And so some writers have seized on an explanation that has a mythic history as rich and powerful as any blameworthy figure in human lore: It&#39;s the women&#39;s fault.

Not all women, of course, but specifically feminists. These horrid people have, we are told, upset the natural order. They have made women more like men, causing them to demand for themselves the same privileges and prerogatives that men alone have traditionally enjoyed. At the same time, they have demanded that men stop behaving like louts, thus feminizing them, making them more female, robbing them of their manly virtue. <em>National Review</em> columnist John Derbyshire started the drumbeat by arguing that all of the students should have been armed, the better to kill the shooter. But that wasn&#39;t his main point.

"Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals," he wrote, "why didn&#39;t anyone rush the guy? It&#39;s not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns, for goodness&#39; sake — one of them reportedly a .22."

Nathan Blake, a writer for the weblog Human Events caught Derbyshire&#39;s meaning and amplified it. "Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that."

Now, you may think that blaming students for not rushing a man with two semi-automatic handguns is, to put it nicely, insane. Especially since there were more than a few examples of bravery that day, from the resident adviser who gave his life trying to protect the first victim of the shooting to the students who held the door shut with their feet while Cho fired away above them. But of course, one should never let facts get in the way of a good session of blaming women. Besides, it wasn&#39;t just the men hand-wringing about those wimpy men; there were also women hand-wringing about those tough women.

Sarah Baxter, writing for the Sunday <em>Times of London</em>, fingered female sexual promiscuity as the reason that Cho Seng-hui went on his rampage, going so far as to quote long-time scold Camile Paglia in her argument.

"The pervasive hook-up culture at college," wrote Baxter, "where girls are prepared to sleep with boys they barely know or fancy, can be a source of seething resentment and alienation for those who are left out.

"&#39;Young women now seem to want to behave like men and have sex without commitment. The signals they are giving are very confusing, and rage and humiliation build up in boys who are spurned again and again&#39; [said Paglia]."

As the Kinks once said, it&#39;s a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world. And that&#39;s when the gods get angry.

The scolds, of course, never really explain why it is that "young women behaving like men" is confusing and enraging — or at least, why young women behaving like men is worse than young men behaving like men. They don&#39;t have to bother. We all know that good girls don&#39;t, and cool boys do-the message is driven into us, all of us, from the moment we become aware of what sex might be.

If anything exacerbated the insanity of Cho Seung-hui, it was this message — the message that if he was worthy, he should be having sex, and lots of it. That if he was worthy, women would and should be lining up for him — but not the pure and chaste ones. Normal people learn, at some point, that this message doesn&#39;t make a lot of sense; that sex, while entertaining, is neither the best nor the most important measure of human worth and human happiness. We learn that whether you&#39;re having sex or not is a truly meaningless measure of your worth as a human being — whether you&#39;re a good girl who is, or a cool boy who isn&#39;t.

But Cho Seung-hui wasn&#39;t equipped to deal with this message, this drumbeat that he was a failure because he wasn&#39;t successful with women. And so he turned his rage to violence, first stalking women, then ultimately attacking them. That his rage reached a violent crescendo that included men as well was unsurprising, for it wasn&#39;t women he hated, or men — it was himself.

The killer internalized the messages of what men are "supposed" to be, and when he could not measure up in his mind to that standard, he did the only thing he could think to do — he became ultra-violent, violence being another acceptable proof of manliness. It wasn&#39;t a shortage of manliness that was the problem last Monday, it was a surfeit.

And so we come to find that the fault, if there was fault that we can assigned, lay not at the feet of the women who rejected a stalker, nor at feminists who want people to have rough equality, nor at men and women who faced a horrific massacre and did not all fight back against nigh-impossible odds. If there was a fault, it was that we as a society continue to try to tell people what they&#39;re supposed to be, rather than letting them determine that for themselves. That&#39;s not as satisfying as blaming women, nor as simple as blaming victims. But it&#39;s the truth, and we do ourselves and the dead no favor by pretending otherwise.

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<p>Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho&#39;s blog [eugenecho.com]

weeks have now passed. perhaps, it&#39;s become an afterthought for many. personally, a day hasn&#39;t gone by without some thoughts of the <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_Shooting">virginia tech tragedy</a>. the tragedy exposed a great deal - it exposed what we all already know: we live in a broken and fallen word. it was never meant to be like this. i say that not for it to be an easy exit or answer but to illuminate <strong>the deep nature of jesus&#39; redemptive live, death, and resurrection</strong>. it also exposed the reality that "race matters" and that race is something the human collective will never fully understand, grasp, and elevate.

in addition, i was exposed. <a target="_blank" href="http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/making-sense-of-virginia-tech/">one poorly written post</a> attracted about 16,000 hits in a span of two days. it wasn&#39;t the kind of notoriety i was hoping for but this blog became one of the most visited wordpress blogs during that span. local papers called [eventually had a chance to write a <a target="_blank" href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/312786_techkorean24.html">guest column</a> for the seattle pi]. churchgoers called. friends around the country emailed. and like many, i found myself glued to the TV until i had to just pull the plug. because of the high traffic through the blog, i received my share of some interesting emails - those that were thought provoking and those that were <strong>downright scary</strong>. i sort of freaked out because of some of the emails which prompted me to go through the blog and delete all pics of the family and kids.

it also exposed my depravity. this was a snapshot of the progression of some of my thoughts:</p>
<blockquote>"wow, how could this have happened? what a tragedy. i must pray for these folks."

"what? they think an asian man did it? that&#39;s impossible. asians don&#39;t do stuff like that. but just in case, i hope it&#39;s not a korean person."

s#@t. it is a korean person. why do the news keep insisting he&#39;s a foreigner?!? there&#39;s going to be backlash. do i send my kids to school today?</blockquote>
<p>as i shared in the message i taught at my church the sunday after the shootings, amidst many things, the incident exposed my self-centeredness. while i do still believe the concerns i raised are legitimate and important conversations, it&#39;s so easy to park your thoughts on the SELF. the truth is i am a selfish, self-centered, wicked, and depraved man. thank God for his mercy and grace. <strong>only through Him can i see hints of the beauty i was intended to embody.</strong>

anyway, i ran across this article from christianity today entitled, <em>"nightmare of nightmares: virginia tech&#39;s korean christians wrestle with the aftermath of a massacre,"</em> and was particularly intrigued by the following quote:</p>
<blockquote>In the meantime, Korean Americans continue to grapple with the massacre. Korean Baptist&#39;s Chung quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote, "The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."

Kang said the fundamental issue is the problem of evil. "We ask, &#39;Why does God allow these things to happen?&#39;" he said, "rather than seeing this as the natural consequences of sinful society that Christ came to redeem.

"Western Christians struggle to make meaning of what happens in America because we&#39;re insulated. It&#39;s a dying and degenerate world. We&#39;re [experiencing] the consequences of sin." <a target="_blank" href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/june/16.52.html">[read full article]</a></blockquote>
<p>april 16, 2007...it&#39;s been nearly two months. <strong>how are you processing the events of virginia tech? any thoughts on the article or the quote above?</strong>

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seattle PI guest column on the tragedy of virginia tech

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<p>Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho&#39;s blog [eugenecho.com]

Here&#39;s the guest column I had the privilege of writing for the Seattle Post Intelligencer [published for Tuesday, April 24, 2007]. I&#39;ve also included some other reads I have personally found very moving and insightful. I was limited by time and a word count, but hoped that this <a target="_blank" href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/312786_techkorean24.html">&#39;guest column&#39;</a> would be a source of healing, deeper understanding, and blessing to many. I wish I did a better job, [and given them my own title], and spoken from a larger Asian perspective. One clarification I want to make - while I and other Koreans/Asians grieve and feel pain and &#39;shame&#39; over Seung Hui Cho, <strong>we are not the victims in this tragedy.</strong> My hope was to convey that no matter who or what we are, we are all connected to one another - not just because of our ethnic identity but our larger <strong>human collective and narrative</strong>. Because of the invitation to address the larger Washington readership, I chose not to be preachy. Much of this editorial comes from some initial thoughts shared in a blog entry from last week entitled, <a target="_blank" href="http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/making-sense-of-virginia-tech/">&#39;Making Sense of the Senseless.&#39;</a>

If you have a lot of time and are bored, here&#39;s the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.seattlequest.org/sermons/2007.04.22.m3u">mp3 of the sermon [57.12]</a> I shared last Sunday at <a target="_blank" href="http://seattlequest.org">Quest Church</a>. I preached from 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, Isaiah 1:17, and Matthew 5:9 entitled, <strong>&#39;Love Wins.&#39;</strong> Yes, it is very long but I also have to stay true to my preaching nickname: &#39;Fiddy.&#39;

Here&#39;s the direct link to the <a target="_blank" href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/312786_techkorean24.html">Seattle PI column</a>:</p>
<blockquote>Like everyone else — here (Seattle), there (Virginia), West (United States), East (Korea) and everywhere (the larger world), I have been shocked and horrified over the Virginia Tech shooting. I have been trying to make sense of something that is senseless.

Personally, the emotions have been even more convoluted because of my bicultural identity. I was born in Korea, immigrated to the United States at the age of 6 and thus am Korean American. I am also a U.S. citizen; I am a Korean American male immigrant and even share the same surname as the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho.

Once I discovered that the gunman was Korean American, I had some initial fears of racial backlash. As a proud citizen of this country, I do not believe there will be any overt backlash. It would be nonsensical for people to associate the heinous crime to Koreans or Korean Americans simply because of Seung-Hui Cho&#39;s ethnicity.

In that same vein, it would have been preposterous and unjust for us to place blame on African Americans for the actions of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo in the Beltway Sniper attacks of 2002 or to ask white Americans to share blame with Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombings of 1995.

But in the days after the identity of the gunman was revealed, many in the media and larger culture may have been perplexed by the responses of Koreans and Korean Americans. Many Koreans expressed embarrassment, shame and even guilt. State Sen. Paul Shinn fought back his tears as he apologized to fellow lawmakers. Even despite being reassured by others that an apology was not necessary, he continued.

Although I personally don&#39;t feel the need to directly apologize for the actions of Seung-Hui Cho, I understand why Shinn and others feel the need to do so. Although not apologetic, I share in deep pain, embarrassment and shame. I share in the deep pain because when I see images of this young man, I don&#39;t just see a "crazy Asian killer," I also see someone whose life story sounds very similar to mine. Such words as lonely, isolated and quiet were often used to describe my younger life as I struggled to fit in as an immigrant.

I share in embarrassment and shame because I see Seung-Hui Cho as a part of my larger community. As Koreans or Korean Americans, we share not only similar life stories but also a communal bond. Contrary to perhaps the more "individualistic" worldview of Westerners, Koreans have a certain communal identity.

One can contend that to be Korean is to be communal. No one is an island to themselves. For that reason, Koreans tend to rejoice and mourn on the successes and failures of fellow Koreans. We rejoice with individuals such as James Sun ("The Apprentice"), Michelle Wie (LPGA golfer), Yul Kwon ("Survivor: Cook&#39;s Island), Hines Ward (NFL player) and Yunjin Kim (ABC&#39;s "Lost").

And because we are a communal culture — not only as Koreans but also within our Korean American immigrant experience — we mourn and feel deep pain and shame over Seung-Hui Cho.

Last week, someone asked me "Why am I mourning? Is it because of the one or the 32″? For me, and many Korean Americans, the answer is both. We are mourning because of the 33. We are mourning because great pain and harm have been inflicted upon the lives of 32 individuals and their loved ones — each one with beautiful lives, stories, dreams and futures.

We are mourning because the one, Seung-Hui Cho — a part of us — chose to commit a horrible act of violence and devastation. Last week, my wife and I have broken down in tears in random situations. We cry and pray for the 32, their families, the students and community at Blacksburg, but also cry for Seung-Hui Cho and his family. We cry because in him, we see a younger brother. And so, we grieve for the 33.

Although I know that it is not necessary to apologize, I do want to share these words. On behalf of Koreans and Korean Americans, I want to extend our deepest condolences and love to all the families of those affected by the tragedy at Virginia Tech. It is my sincere hope and prayer — that no matter who or what we are — we grow to understand we are all connected to one another.

The Rev. Eugene Cho is lead pastor at Quest Church, a multiethnic church in Seattle <a target="_blank" href="http://seattlequest.org">(seattlequest.org);(</a><a target="_blank" href="http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/">eugenecho.wordpress.com</a>).</blockquote>
<p>May each of us take to heart the ministry of reconciliation, the pursuit of justice for the oppressed and &#39;other&#39; and be peacemakers.</p>
<blockquote>Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We&#39;re Christ&#39;s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God&#39;s work of making things right between them. We&#39;re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he&#39;s already a friend with you. <strong>2 Corinthians 5:17-20</strong></blockquote>
<p> This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007

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<p>Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho&#39;s blog [eugenecho.com]</p>
<p>Like everyone else - here [Seattle], there [Virginia], West [United States, East [Korea], and everywhere, I am trying to make sense of something that is simply - <strong>senselesss.</strong> Personally, the emotions have been even more convoluted because I am <strong>Korean-American</strong>. I am a <strong>Korean immigrant</strong> [immigrated at the age of 6] and understand the <strong>immigrant experience</strong>; I am a Korean-American Immigrant <strong>Male</strong> [who even shares the <strong>same last name</strong> - &#39;<strong>C-H-O&#39; </strong>- as the gunman]. I am a <strong>Christian pastor</strong> involved in the institution of <strong>Religion</strong> that Seung Hui Cho criticized and expressed disappointment. For these reasons, many have asked, called, IM&#39;d, and emailed asking me to share some of my thoughts - as a person, a Christian, an immigrant, a pastor, but especially as a Korean-American man. I&#39;m sharing some thoughts [some which are still in vomitaceous process] in hopes that we can dialogue here - <strong>that it may serve as part of the healing and redemptive process.</strong></p>
<p>Monday night was an incredibly eerie day for me. After watching the news with incredulity and horror, I posted a <a target="_blank" href="http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/04/16/tragedy-at-virginia-tech/">blog entry about the tragedy in Virginia Tech</a>. About 9pm [PST], I began to literally have over hundred people instantaneously get to my blog in a span of two hours.</p>
<blockquote><strong>Search Views | </strong>seung cho blog 18, cho virginia tech myspace 17, virginia tech shooting cho 17, cho 15, cho virginia tech 15, virginia tech cho 13, cho virginia 9, virginia tech student shooter Cho 9, virginia shooter cho myspace 8, Sung Cho Blacksburg 7, virginia tech blog cho 7, blog virginia tech 2, cho seung virginia tech shooting 2, Cho, Korean, Blacksburg 2CHO, virginia shooting korean 2, Virginia Tech Myspace Cho 2, Cho myspace virginia tech 2, Cho Seung virginia tech 2, virginia tech cho shooting 2, Myspace Cho Virginia Tech 2, "Cho" Blacksburg 2, viginia tech cho korea shooting 2, "Cho" virginia tech korea myspace 2, cho virginia tech shoot 2, korean virginia tech cho 2, pastoral health 2, quest eugene cho 2, cho virginia tech shooting 2, virginia cho 2</blockquote>
<p>As I examined my dashboard through wordpress, it was fairly obvious to me that while the news wouldn&#39;t be shared to the larger world until the next morning, there was strong suspicion - perhaps through authorities or through some of the student body - that the gunman may have been someone named Seung [Hui] Cho. I was speechless, ashamed, angry, and afraid. [You can also add &#39;guilty&#39; because of my selfishness. Like others, I felt "pathetic" in wishing the person wasn&#39;t Korean or Asian...I became more self-focused rather on mourning with those who have suffered in the tragedy].</p>
<p>Some vomitaceous thoughts, questions, and reflections:</p>
<p><strong>1</strong> We need to <strong>remember, foremost</strong>, that lives have been dramatically impacted. 33 people have died. 32 who were completely innocent. E<strong>ach person that died or was severely injured has a name, a story, a family, a passion, a dream, and a life.</strong> Let&#39;s not forget that in the midst of the media frenzy. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/20070418_VICTIMS_GRAPHIC.html"><strong>This is a must read</strong></a><strong>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>2</strong> It&#39;s clear that Seung Cho was unhealthy, unstable, disturbed, ill [schizophrenia?], angry, lost, and [place your words here]. But that&#39;s the only clear thing. I needed the turn the TV off because the &#39;stretching&#39; for information, analysis, scrutiny, and answers to who, what, where, when, and why was overly speculative. Compare the reporting of Fox News and <a target="_blank" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/">BBC News</a>...</p>
<p>While I understand the need for &#39;why,&#39; we&#39;re simply not going to know the full picture. While Seung&#39;s action were horrible and evil [<a target="_blank" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6570241.stm">and premeditated</a>], we must remind ourselves that he too is a human being - <strong>as difficult as that might be</strong>. Knowing some of the dynamics of the Asian/Korean culture and the synthesis of pain, guilt, and shame, I am sincerely worried for his family - particularly his parents. They, too, are victims in this story. Update: read the <a target="_blank" href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003674966_webfamilystatement20.html">statement issued by Sun Kyung Cho and her family.</a></p>
<p>One thing that the media won&#39;t touch is the simple and painful matter: Evil exists in our world. There is a spiritual dimension that the media won&#39;t discuss but the church must engage. As much as we seek to create a perfect world [and it is a worthwhile pursuit], this will not be the first nor will it be the first murder or tragedy.</p>
<p><strike>3 why do the media keep calling him &#39;cho&#39;? he has a first name... maybe it&#39;s me, but i&#39;m tired of hearing and reading my last name. couple folks actually emailed me [from other parts of the country] through the blog to ask if i&#39;m related to seung.</strike></p>
<p><strong>4 </strong> Will there be racial backlash? Do Asians and Koreans need to fear? On the most part, I do not believe there will be overt backlash but there are always going to be pockets of people that will be stupid and do stupid things. It would be nonsenical for people to associate this violent act to Koreans or Asians simply because of Seung Hui Cho&#39;s ethnicity. In that same vein, it would have been preposterous and unjust for us to place blame on African-Americans for the actions of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo in the &#39;Beltway Sniper attacks&#39; of 2002 or to ask White Americans to share blame with Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma bombings of 1995.</p>
<p>But the question must be asked. How is the media influencing <strong>the construct of the national consciousness?</strong> That&#39;s a worthwhile question for me. In the early reporting, I was perturbed that Seung was being referred to as <strong>&#39;the Asian killer&#39;</strong> and <strong>&#39;the Korean killer.&#39;</strong> While he is Asian and Korean, the media needs to be more responsible in their sensational reporting. What do you think?</p>
<p>As one commenter replied in an earlier posting:</p>
<blockquote>i definitely wish/ hope that most would not see the shooter as representative of all asians, but in america, if the person in question is not a white, heterosexual, protestant, middle class, educated man, then their race, creed and color seems to always be part of the equation. he has been marked as the resident alien from abroad who came into our land and terrorized us, and with our heightened fear of the other, this situation seems to be full of potential for type casting and APIA caricatures. and i think if these kinds of caricatures flourish (as they did with mid-easterners post 9/11), then it&#39;s not unreasonable to fear violent reprisal. and so while i certainly hope that people can view the event as isolated, i know that it&#39;s very difficult for our culture to separate media representations of people groups from &#39;reality.&#39;</blockquote>
<p><strong>5 </strong> Why are Koreans/Asians afraid of backlash? My hope is that in the midst of this tragedy, a small glimpse will be captured of the Asian-American [immigrant] experience. Asians and particularly, Korean-Americans are xenophobic. Historically, Koreans have been invaded, pillaged, and exploited...one of the foremost Korean historians <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ki-baek_Lee">Ki-Baek Lee</a> refers to Korea as "the prostitute of Asia." From an immigrant experience, two very formative events in modern Asian American history impact our responses as Asian-Americans - particularly those who are older. In my opinion, the most significant event in modern Asian-American history is the story of <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Chin">Vincent Chin</a> - a Chinese American man beaten to death by a baseball bat by two white auto industry workers - outside of a club during his bachelor party. Even worse, the white men were acquitted. For <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_American">Korean Americans</a>, the most significant event in their modern history is the <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_riots">LA riots </a>and specifically, Sai-I-Gu (4/29).</p>
<p>The United States is an incredible country and I am a proud citizen of this country; but it&#39;s not a perfect country and while I believe there won&#39;t be an overt backlash, I do worry how it will impact the individual and larger [White] collective view of Asian-Americans, Korean-Americans, "foreigners," "immigrants" and such. We should agree: if one Asian or Korean is bullied as a result of this, it&#39;s one too many. If one woman is bullied because of her gender, it&#39;s one too many. If one gay person is bullied because of their orientation, it&#39;s one too many.</p>
<p><strong>6</strong> As we mourn for those impacted, we must ask the question, "Why am I mourning?" Are Korean-Americans and Asian-Americans mourning because the perpetrator was Korean [because of shame and/or fear] or because of the larger tragedy? Are we mourning because of the <strong>1 </strong>or are we mourning because of the <strong>32</strong>? <strong>For Koreans, the answer is likely both.</strong> We are mourning because of the <strong>33.</strong> This is important to understand. To be Korean - culturally - is to be communal. Koreans are interconnected in a communal culture. We rejoice and mourn with the successes and failures of our fellow Koreans or Korean-Americans. We cling and rejoice with individuals like James Sun [The Apprentice], Paul Kim [American Idol], Michelle Wie [LPGA golfer], Yul Kwon [Survivor: Cook&#39;s Island], Hines Ward [NFL Football], and Yunjin Kim [ABC&#39;s Lost]. And because we are a communal culture - interconnected - not only as Koreans but also within our KA immigrant experience, we mourn and feel deep pain and shame over Seung Hui Cho.</p>
<p>For the larger Anglo worldview, the question must also be asked: Is Seung Hui Cho an "Asian Killer" or "the Korean Killer" or is he a Korean-<strong>American</strong> [emphasis added] or an American that committed an evil crime? What is the demarcation of what it means to be an American? He immigrated at the age of 8; grew up in Detroit; moved to the suburbs of Washington DC; educated in the States; and was an English major in Virginia Tech.<p>
<p>A great definition of community <strong>(Romans 12:15)</strong> is when [or if] we choose to "<strong>mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice."</strong> As Asian-Americans, we must mourn with those who mourn not simply because an Asian was involved in the crime, but because our larger community - our country - is in mourning. This is also our country, our people, our college community...this can&#39;t be <strong>their</strong> tragedy. <strong>this is [must be] our shared tragedy.</strong></p>
<p><strong>7 </strong> Why are we so violent as Americans? Should we discuss gun control here? Where do we start? What is our Christian response? Why are so many Christians so adamant about the right to bear arms? Where is that found in the Scriptures? I can cite tons of places about mercy, humility, justice, the oppressed, the poor, the widows...but why such obsession with arms and yet, such silence on the items listed above? How are we as Christians and as consumers feeding the violence acceptance of our culture? Insert pop culture here.</p>
<p><strong>8 </strong> The lives of those who have perished must be remembered, cherished and celebrated. Period.</p>
<p>But today alone, nearly <a target="_blank" href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1674607.ece">200 people were killed in Bahgdad</a>. It is estimated that approximately 30,000 children will die today because of poverty [according to UNICEF]. That&#39;s 210,000 children this week; a little under 11 million children [five and under] each year.</p>
<p>While this is a horrible tragedy, <strong>[one life lost - is one too many] we must commit ourselves to the elevation of the sanctity of life. each person - with a name, a story, a family, a dream, a beauty...</strong></p>
<p>Let&#39;s remain in prayer for those impacted in this shared tragedy; let&#39;s mourn with those who mourn; hope together; and work - whatever faith, ethnicity, country, political affiliation - for the shared responsibility of being a good neighbor.</p>
<p>_________</p>
<p><strong>One last note.</strong> As a Korean-American Male Cho Immigrant Christian Pastor, I do have another response:</p>
<p>God is love. Because He is Love, He created order out of chaos. His purpose was love and shalom. We were created for beauty - created in the image of God. Shalom was violated and marred. Our image tainted and cracked. Jesus came to redeem and restore. Invitation is extended to all - including the lonely, the outcast, the marginalized, the rich, the debaucherized, and such. And lest we forget or bathe in our righteousness, we have all fallen short of the glory of God. We are confronted by our depravity. We all need God and thanks be to God, the Lord is not far. He is near.</p>
<p>This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Archived with permission of the author.</p>
<p>Original Source: Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho&#39;s blog [eugenecho.com]<br />
<a href="http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/making-sense-of-virginia-tech/">http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/making-sense-of-virginia-tech/</a></p>

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P.I.D. Radio 4/29/07: Peter Levenda - What Made Cho a Killer?

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16 kpbs MP3 6.9 MB

April 29, 2007

Today we feature audio from a radio interview Derek conducted Friday, April 27th with Peter Levenda, author of the excellent three-volume set Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft.

Simply put, Peter is as bothered by certain details of the Virginia Tech massacre as we are, and he&#39;s concerned that the major media&#39;s superficial analysis of the case is leading us to accept Cho Seung-Hui as nothing more than the latest in a long line of lone gunmen.